


We Really Don't Get Paid Enough For This Shit

by queen_of_troy



Series: All The Marvel Ladies Hang Out [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Drinking, Dubious Science, F/F, Gen, Late Night Conversations, Multi, Passing the Bechdel Test
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 05:37:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4007842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_of_troy/pseuds/queen_of_troy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ladies of S.H.I.E.L.D. (and their friends) really put up with far more nonsense than they should; it’s not that surprising that sometimes they just need to all collapse in someone’s living room with alcohol and have a good bitching session.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Really Don't Get Paid Enough For This Shit

**Author's Note:**

> Written and set pre-AoU and AoS season 2 mid-season finale  
> By queenoftroy  
> 

“Where are you guys off to?” Skye asked, curiously eyeing the bottle of Scotch hanging from Melinda’s hand.

The older agent paused and shared a look with Bobbi, weighing up whether the potential risks of telling Skye outdid the inevitable prying that would occur when they got back. Bobbi nodded, and Melinda turned back to Skye.

“Having a drink with friends,” she said.

“Oh. Okay, cool. Have fun.” She returned to her laptop, for once surprising her SO, who raised an eyebrow.

“That’s it?”

“Well, it’s obviously some super-cool Level 7+ hangout that you’d never invite your former-hacktivist trainee to, so why bother asking?”

Melinda sighed. “Do you want to come?” Skye’s head shot up.

“Really? You’re serious? I can come?”

“As long as you hold my hair out of my face while I puke later,” Bobbi said with a grin. Skye couldn’t quite tell if she was joking or not, but she decided that it was worth it either way.

“Can I bring Simmons?”

“Fine. But no making out in front of everyone.” Skye squealed and bounced off towards the lab as Bobbi snorted.

“You’re saying that like Hill and Romanoff weren’t practically having sex on the couch last time.”

“Oh, shut up. They knocked it off quickly enough once I sprayed them with the fire extinguisher.”

~

The house was small, average and suburban, with a red Toyota hatchback sitting on the drive. If it wasn’t for the mailbox with  _Romanoff_ written on the side in elegant curly handwriting Skye would have said for sure that Bobbi had given the taxi the wrong address – and she was still about 75% convinced this was some kind of elaborate prank. One of S.H.I.E.L.D’s top assassins, a freaking  _Avenger,_ lived in a bungalow with a  _white picket fence??_

She didn’t have the heart to voice these suspicions to Jemma, who was bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet with a death grip on Skye’s arm as she squeaked, “We’re about to meet Agent  _Romanoff,_ Skye, can you imagine the _stories_  she must have, oh my goodness, do you think she’d get me access to Dr Banner’s blood samples…?”

Melinda and Bobbi sauntered up the drive and opened the front door without knocking, Bobbi yelling as she entered, “Hey assholes, you better have got chips and dip this time!”

Melinda shook her head affectionately and beckoned to the two younger agents, who scurried in behind her clutching each other’s arms.

The small hallway opened almost immediately out into the front room, which was simply decorated with a large sofa, a couple of armchairs and a coffee table, around which several beanbags had been scattered. Melinda had put the bottle down on the coffee table with the assortment of other beverages (all of them alcoholic) and was pouring herself a double, whilst Bobbi had already grabbed a handful of Doritos and flopped into an armchair, stuffing them into her mouth.

Skye and Jemma huddled nervously in the doorway, staring wide-eyed at master assassin Natasha Romanoff – who was sprawled out on the sofa with her head in Maria Hill’s lap and a bowl of Doritos balanced on her stomach, trying to see how many chips she could pile in a tower on her nose.

Maria looked up at the young agents with a smile. “Good to see you two again. Nat, these are Mel’s ducklings.”

“They are not ducklings.”

“Oh, please, you couldn’t be more of a mama duck if you tried.”

Melinda lifted her middle finger and downed her drink as Natasha waved vaguely in their direction, her tongue sticking out of her mouth in concentration as she added another Dorito.

The strawberry-blonde woman on the other end of the couch looked up from her handheld with a smile.

“Jemma, Skye. Nice to finally meet you, we’ve heard so much about you from Mel.”

Skye looked across at Melinda with a huge grin and said, “You told them about us? And, more importantly,  _ducklings?"_

“I am not drunk enough for this conversation,” Melinda muttered, pouring more Scotch. Jemma squeaked nervously and stammered,

“Um, sorry, but, are you Pepper Potts?”

Pepper lifted her glass with a smile. “The one and only.”

“Where’s Sharon?” Bobbi asked.

“Sharon?”

“Sharon Carter,” Maria explained. “She was one of our best before S.H.I.E.L.D. fell, transferred to the CIA.”

“She was a smart-mouthed asshole,” Bobbi snorted. “I miss her like hell.”

“So affectionate,” Maria said. “She’s undercover in Chicago.”

There was a sudden, not-so-small  _bang_ and Skye and Jemma jumped: apparently this was a regular occurrence, because no one else reacted apart from Natasha, who without taking her focus off the Dorito tower yelled, “I already turned the smoke alarm off, just open a window and reassure me we aren’t all gonna die.”

“Everything’s fine!”

Skye and Jemma looked over towards the kitchen, which was separated from the lounge by a worktop covered in pieces of complicated-looking machinery. Some of it was smoking gently, and two women were staring at the whole mess in fascinated confusion, the smaller of the two scribbling frantically into a notebook.

Jemma grabbed Skye’s arm, looking like she was about to faint.

“Is that…?”

“Betty, Jane, say hi to Mel’s ducklings,” Natasha said, waving a hand in Jemma’s general direction. “That one likes science too.”

Jane Foster looked up from her notepad and smiled excitedly, running over to Jemma.

“Hi! Jemma Simmons, right? Melinda told me all about you – here, could you come help us? You’re just what we need, I don’t know a thing about biochem…”

She dragged Jemma off chattering in science-speak which Skye did not understand a word of; Jemma briefly turned back and made a wide-eyed  _oh my god is this happening to me??_ face before her attention was captured by the pile of metal and her eyes lit up in the same way they did every time Tripp brought new specimens into the lab for her.

Having lost her date for the evening, Skye decided there were worse things to do than grab a beer and flump onto the nearest beanbag.

“So,” she said, opening the bottle on her teeth, “what do y’all do at these things?”

“Drink,” Melinda immediately replied, already on her third Scotch.

“And bitch,” Bobbi added.

“About…?”

“Anything that needs bitching about.”

“Except men,” Natasha interrupted firmly. “House rule. No one talks about guys in any context until we’re all at a .14 blood alcohol level,  _minimum._ ”

~

“Wait, you were  _married?_ ” Skye asked, sitting up with wide eyes. Melinda groaned and sank further into her armchair, taking a swig of Scotch straight from the bottle.

“Don’t bother,” Maria told Skye as she opened her mouth, “there is not enough booze in the world to make her talk about it if she doesn't want to.”

“Trust me, we’ve  _tried_ ,” Natasha added from Maria’s lap, where she was now lying on her side with Maria idly combing her fingers through the red locks. The Dorito tower had collapsed at an apparently record 73 Doritos when Bobbi had snidely pointed out that she’d never slept with her boss and gotten a spectacularly off-target pillow thrown at her head by Pepper.

Part of Skye thought that if Natasha freaking Romanoff couldn’t get any details about her marriage out of Melinda there was no way she could ever succeed, but there was enough booze in her system to make her think it was worth a shot, and anyway, Jemma was still too busy sciencing in the kitchen for a makeout contest with Natasha and Maria.

“Was it  _Coulson?"_ It’s the first name that comes into her head, and honestly, it would explain a  _lot_. Melinda’s expression doesn’t change an inch, and Bobbi snorts.

“Please, the only thing Coulson’s married to is S.H.I.E.L.D. And those dumb collectibles – honestly, what does he even  _do_ with those?”

“Come on, he’s cute when he gets excited about those.”

“You’re not really helping dissuade her from the idea that you married him, Mel.” Melinda rolled her eyes.

“It wasn’t Coulson.”

“Hmm.” Skye’s eye lands on Maria, whose smile at the conversation seems a little… knowledgeable? “Oh, my  _god,_ ” she says, pointing an unsteady finger at Maria. “Was it  _you?_ ”

“ _Viper_ ,” Melinda said firmly as Maria threw her head back and laughed.  _Viper_ was Natasha’s codeword for “you’re really pushing it, sweetcheeks, so shut up before I decorate the walls with your intestines”; according to Pepper it had been coined when Stark wouldn’t stop asking what exactly went down in Budapest and had “gotten off lightly” for his nosiness with two cracked ribs and a sprained wrist.

“I’m flattered, Skye, but she really isn’t my type.”

“Yeah, you go more for big-boobed red-heads,” Bobbi said. “I should’ve gone ginger when I had the chance…”

She got several pillows to the head for that one from both Maria and Natasha – whose aim was significantly better than Pepper’s, even under the influence of alcohol.

“Look, Skye,” she said as she emerged from the pile of pillows, rubbing her head, “it’s almost definitely no-one you know, do you really think if her ex was hanging around HQ we wouldn’t know about it? They’d be worse than me and Hunter, and he’s –”

“ _Viper!!_ ” everyone instantly yelled (the topic of Bobbi’s ex had been put under a permanent veto a mere 73 minutes into the evening). Bobbi gave them all the finger and sank back into her chair nursing a bottle of rum.

“Okay, okay,” Skye said, grabbing another beer and ignoring how everything was getting slightly spinny. “Fine. No more exes talk. Where the hell did  _ducklings_ come from _?_ ”

Natasha grinned. “Victoria Hand came up with it. First time she got on that plane of yours Mel was striding about like she owned the place and you, Simmons and… the other little guy…”

“Fitz.”

“…right, Fitz, you were all scampering round after her like itty bitty ducklings chasing after their mama. Victoria said it was so cute she almost threw up all over Lola.”

Skye collapsed back in her beanbag laughing at the image, and the others joined in. She probably wouldn’t have admitted it without the beers coursing through her system but she could see their point. May was glaring at the floor like she was two seconds away from shooting something.

“ _I am not a duck_ ,” she growled through clenched teeth. Unfortunately for her that only made the others laugh harder.

“I am so… I’m so gonna… print that on… a t-shirt for you,” Bobbi choked, sending everyone into further fits. They were laughing so much it actually penetrated the cloud of Science in the kitchen for a moment, and the three in the kitchen looked up in confusion.

Natasha had buried her face in Maria’s lap as both of their shoulders shook, Bobbi was pounding the arm of her chair, Pepper was almost doubled over in her seat, and Skye was flat on the floor with tears running down her cheeks, while Melinda was staring at them all like she was plotting individual ways to kill them.

“What happened?” Jemma asked. Betty shrugged.

“Who knows?” she said. “This always happens sooner or later, just be thankful they didn’t try to have a marksmanship contest in the back yard using a cherry sticking out of Maria’s mouth as a target. Again.”

“Um… guys?”

They both looked down at the machine in Jane’s hands, which had started to emit worrying amounts of smoke.

“Emergency Protocol 3!!” Betty screamed, running to the side door and shouldering it open.

As Jane ran out everyone in the sitting room looked over.

“ _Again?_ ” Natasha groaned. “For gods’ sakes, guys, I just put fish in the pond!”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! This is a new account set up by myself and a friend for our individual and collaborative fic works - there will always be a note at the beginning of every fic letting you know which one of us wrote it.  
> My tumblr is queen-of-troy; kingofhell doesn't have one.  
> We're both happy to take requests if you guys ever have any :)


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